Trump’s rural base was supposed to be unshakeable. A Reuters poll conducted June 3-8 found that 50% of rural Americans approve of his job performance, down from 60% in February 2025, shortly after he began his second term. A 10-point erosion in the constituency that arguably handed him two presidential elections is one number in a cascade of Trump poll results that now point toward serious structural damage heading into the November midterms.
Trump’s overall approval stands at just 35%, with 60% of the country disapproving, according to a June 2026 Economist/YouGov poll – a net rating of -25. That’s not merely an anti-Trump partisan divide. The erosion is showing up across demographic groups that were central to his 2024 victory: rural voters, independents, young men, and even his own 2024 voters.
Silver Bulletin’s presidential tracker is a constantly updating polling average compiled by statistician Nate Silver. It shows Trump’s net approval hit a second-term low of -21.2 in late May, before partially recovering to -18.7 by early June. At this same point in his first term, Trump’s net approval was just -11.2 – and even Joe Biden’s was only -13.5.
The Economy Is the Core Problem in Trump Poll Results
The single clearest driver of these Trump poll results is inflation. By late May, his net approval on the economy had dropped below -30 for the first time in his second term, and recent polls show that just 20 to 30 percent of Americans approve of how he’s handled inflation.
A Data for Progress survey conducted May 15-18, 2026, found Democrats leading Republicans on a generic congressional ballot by 8 points among likely voters, with voters trusting Democrats more on 12 of 15 issues – including their top issue, the economy and jobs.
Surveys from Verasight fielded May 18-19, 2026, found Trump hitting multiple new approval lows across key metrics, including economic and inflation ratings falling to new second-term lows with widening negative net scores. A YouGov/Economist poll from June 2026 found that a record 63% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy. Meanwhile, Marquette Law School polling from May 2026 found only 22% believe Trump’s policies will actually reduce inflation, down from 41% right after his 2024 reelection.
A May 2026 Morris/Verasight analysis found that even on Trump’s strongest non-border issues – deportations, immigration, and crime – he’s at -12 across the board, with border security the lone exception where he’s tied. The same analysis found that just 25% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling prices, while 72% disapprove – and that Trump’s approval on prices had gotten worse every single month of 2026, hitting -47 net approval in May, down from -31 in January.
The Millennial and Gen Z Collapse
Trump’s approval among millennials has hit its lowest level recorded in the Economist/YouGov polling series, with the latest poll showing just 26% approval and 65% disapproval – a net rating of -39. The Newsweek analysis notes this represents a 40-point swing in net approval among millennials since early 2025.
Polling throughout 2025 and 2026 has shown younger cohorts posting some of Trump’s weakest approval ratings, with economic concerns, cost-of-living pressures, and foreign policy decisions frequently cited as key drivers. For millennials specifically, housing affordability, inflation, and wage growth appear to carry disproportionate weight.
Among even younger voters, the picture is similarly grim. Trump’s approval among young voters has fallen sharply in multiple national polls conducted in April and May 2026, with major surveys from The Economist/YouGov and AtlasIntel showing a consistent pattern – Trump’s net approval among Gen Z falling from positive or moderately negative territory in early 2025 to deeply negative ratings of between -42 and as low as -76 in recent polling.
The Yale Youth Poll Spring 2026 results put specific numbers to this: 68% of voters aged 18-22 and 72% of those aged 23-29 express disapproval of Trump’s job performance. That scale of opposition among voters who turned out in significant numbers for Trump in 2024 carries real electoral consequences for November.
Voters aged 18 to 22 favor Democrats by 23 points, while those aged 23 to 29 back Democrats by 30 points – in contrast to 2024 presidential exit polls that showed Republicans roughly tied with or narrowly ahead of Democrats among the youngest cohorts. Gen Z appears to be breaking decisively against Trump, reshaping a critical battleground demographic ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The Trust Deficit
Beyond job performance ratings, the erosion is hitting something harder to rebuild: the personal attributes that historically served as Trump’s political floor. One of the steepest declines in Pew Research Center’s May 2026 survey has been in the share of Americans who say Trump “keeps his promises” – 38% say this describes him very or fairly well, down from 43% last August and 51% shortly after his reelection.
The same Pew survey found declines in the number of Americans who see Trump as “honest” (down to 34%), “mentally sharp” (down to 44%), or “a good role model” (down to 26%).
Americans’ assessments of Trump have declined steadily over the last several months, with his job approval now at 34% – the lowest mark of his second term – and losses across a variety of personal attributes and issue areas. The Pew May 2026 report found that 56% of Americans say the overall level of ethics and honesty in the federal government has fallen under Trump. Critically, the erosion is no longer confined to Democrats, with notable slippage among Republicans and even within Trump’s own 2024 voter coalition.
While most Trump voters still approve of the way he is handling his job as president, that share is shrinking: 78% of his 2024 voters currently approve of him, down from 83% in January and 95% in the early days of his term.
What the Midterm Map Looks Like Now
Presidential approval at these levels historically translates directly into congressional losses. The most decisive number may be independent voters. USPollingData’s June 2026 tracker shows independent approval of Trump at 34%, which is the politically decisive figure – every president who triggered a wave midterm loss saw independent approval fall below 40% before Election Day. Trump’s 34% now puts him below the 36% level that preceded Democrats’ 41-seat gain in 2018.
The generic congressional ballot reflects this shift: Democrats hold a 46%-42% edge among registered voters in the latest weekly Morning Consult tracking, up from a Republican advantage of R+3 at the start of Trump’s second term in January 2025. The Data for Progress May 2026 poll among likely voters puts that lead at 8 points.
Silver Bulletin’s generic ballot tracker notes that at this point in the 2018 cycle, the generic ballot was virtually identical at D+6.8 – and Democrats went on to pick up 40 seats in the House. A generic ballot lead of 5+ points for either party typically translates to a meaningful seat gain, though geographic distribution and gerrymandering can dampen the seat total relative to the vote share. Democrats’ current D+5.4 advantage, if sustained to Election Day, would historically project to a net gain of 15 to 30 House seats.
The redistricting picture adds complexity. Once redistricting is fully resolved, Republicans could shift as many as 14 House seats to the right through gerrymandering. That means the generic ballot lead Democrats currently hold may need to be larger than 2018 levels to produce comparable seat gains – a structural challenge that polling alone doesn’t resolve.
Read More: Trump’s Second-Term Approval Hits New Lows – Here’s What the Data Shows
What to Do With These Numbers
The midterms are on November 3, 2026. History offers a consistent pattern: presidential approval below 40% at this stage of the cycle, combined with a generic ballot lead exceeding 5 points for the opposition party, has preceded significant wave elections in 1974, 1994, and 2018.
Among rural voters overall, Trump’s net job approval fell from +20 in early 2025 to -14 in May 2026, according to Fox News polling analyzed by Brookings. Among white rural voters, the net approval fell from +27 to -6. Only 25% of these voters now strongly approve of his job performance, compared to 43% who strongly disapprove. A further 5-point slide in rural approval – to 45% – would eliminate the geographic buffer that offset Democratic advantages in suburban and urban districts. Combine that with millennial net approval at -39, independent approval at 34%, and record disapproval on inflation, and Republicans’ structural position heading into the fall looks more exposed than at any point in Trump’s political career.
The White House has consistently pointed to Trump’s 2024 election victory as evidence that polls misread his support. That argument had weight in 2016, and to a lesser extent in 2020. Just 16% of white rural voters say their family’s financial situation is better than it was two years ago, while 49% say they are worse off. Sixty-four percent identify cost of living as the most important economic problem they face, and only 30% approve of Trump’s handling of that issue. The voters who need to show up in competitive House districts – suburban independents, rural moderates, younger men who backed Trump in 2024 – are now being asked to weigh that record against grocery prices, not immigration.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.